Little Adeu About Much
by Bigoldfrog
Summary: Sundering times cataclysmically acted
1. Chapter 1

Little Adieu about Much

Avatar, all names, locations, logos and trademarks created in James Cameron's Avatar universe, belong to James Cameron and the team who pulled off such majesty as to awaken a beleaguered soul according to my heart- but Avatar, all names, locations, logos and trademarks are property of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation and Dune Entertainment LLC according to most laws.

Events heretofore occur throughout the 24 hour expanse after Quaritch gives his 'That is a fact' speech.

... ...

(Terran Doomsday on Pandora) T + 22 minutes

Only one minute left, no possible way to save his life. His heart had kissed poison and hammers at the deathly passion it found; squeezing and beating tremulously faster and faster. The rubicund spattered head of Liam Thoms dipped right, his vision rolled towards the slicing pain in his shoulder and the sleek jutting shaft pinning him to the fallen tree.

"Sky demon! Why did you put your clothes on my head." Li'sal barked, throwing the drenched bloodied garment at him.

"To save your life." He whispered in Na'vi. His eyes, growing bloodshot from the increasing pressure his ailing heart filled him with, met captivating ones of gold. In death he had the power to hold the gaze.

... ...

(Terran Doomsday on Pandora) T - 12 Hours, 3 minutes

"I am telling you, this is all a stinkin' load of BS." Corporal Apothecary Liam Thoms said, throwing his worn white muscle shirt over his head. "Where the hell is the hardware?"

"Yeah, you've told me yer gripes a couple hun'red times already."

"And look who was right?"

"Not me or you."

"C'mon Andy, don't this remind you of that old movie, uh.." Thoms flicked his callused fingers, stumbling on his speech. "You know, VHS, twentieth century- Aliens, that was it."

"Haven't seen that one." Private Andy Milor flexed the triangular bulges of his shoulder muscles, drawing vertical lines all across his neck. He grinned at the intimidating reflection cast by the small tarnished mirror in his locker.

"Yeah. Those sorry blokes walked into a bunch of hostile aliens with civilian crap, shotguns and whatnot. If they had their miniguns, or if at O-six hundred tomorrow we had high-gauss rifles instead of blackpowder, hell's no any of us would be goin' home in body bags."

Milor slammed shut the flaking green locker door, rolling his square coarsely shaven head out of cricks.

"You want to mow down some Na'vi with a minigun?"

"I want to be alive tomorrow night-"

'Alright maggots, quit tiptoein' around and get some.' Sergeant Wainfleet's hoarse bawl came from beyond the rows of fragrant and defaced lockers.

"Shite." Thoms muttered. "What is his problem now?"

'I will bring the pain with the wet tip of my towel to any airsucking maggot still in here.'

"Airsucking? Wainfleet has mental problems. How the hell did that clown end up our superior anyways?"

"Better him than me." Milor whispered.

"You're the only one that can say that." Thoms palmed his locker door with careful tenacity, tickling the heavy silence with a gentle click of mechanical lock.

'You guys here that? That's me bouncing my towel o nine tails... I know there's some fellas in here.' Footfalls of military sole on concrete tapped rhythmically behind the silent gesture.

Thoms stared at his juggernaut compatriot a mischievous moment and snickered in zero decibel. He reached under the kicked-in hole through the steel guard by his feet, grabbing a nose-sized rock while gave a roguish nod.

"Wainfleet you're a blimey limp dick wingnut-" Milor shouted in his near spotless impression of Second Lieutenant Briggs. Thoms hucked the stone in a low lazy arc at the far corner of locker upon locker.

'That's just wrong.. You goin' down Briggs.' Wainfleet hollered, stomping ominously.

There was a clatter like a hammer hitting a symbol and breaking it.

'Oi! what the 'ell is this, a stone?' The second lieutenant swore.

'Hope you like nine tails Briggs.' Wainfleet sneered, slamming his feet ominously with each step as he descended on his prey.

'Sod you Milor, only a dimwit like Wainfleet could confuse-'

Thoms reached an arm out the fire exit, holding it open just wide enough that his large friend could slip by while a one sided argument involving a wet towel ensued out of sight.

Outside in the spartan hallway the duo were the only two not taken by the gripping mood that infused the very air with a sense of gung-ho grim purpose. The Colonel himself gave them an icy flinch as they passed, his three distinct scars zigzagging in the process.

"See, this is what I mean. The wasp revolver? A damn revolver?"

"You want it gauss right?"

"Gauss is a measurement- never mind. If we had the finest weaponry the RDA could equip us with we wouldn't have to arm those loony miners with guns their drool will cause to malfunction. And we wouldn't be stuck relying on them to toe the line in the fight of our lives."

"Maybe we could send 'em ahead of the real force, fin' out if Na'vi use traps.."

The two slowed to witness and sneer at a small posse of mock-nerve toting civilian miners huddled loosely around one of their pals strapped down into the worn chair of the rec shop. A one eyed veteran with three metal teeth adorning his repulsive smile, affixed with a conspicuous cackling joy a piece of glowing red metal to the seated miner's shoulder.

"Wha t'u lookin' at?" The largest of the motley, clearly war-shocked group said.

Milor started to turn on him, causing the speaker's face as well as his friends' to draw further ashen until Thoms held up his hand.

"You guys getting branded with tridents, show the savages how crazy you are?" The corporal apothecary asked.

Several nodded, looking down at their enflamed and salved skin.

"Tridents have three prongs, not four." Thom's finished, picking up his gait again without further word, nor bothering to listen to the ensuing ruckus.

"Quaritch is going to dope 'em big guy, don't worry about it." Thoms responded to his friend's heavily furrowed brow.

"Won' have ta smell their shite tomorrow in the bush." Milor grunted.

"Only their spilt innards."

Upon the cafeteria, when the malfunctioning doors refused to slide more than a finger's breadth open, Milor clinched their edges with meaty worn hands and flung them to useless, sparking, red-light blaring states at their outside confines, drawing near by nervousness-releasing laughs. The pair entered the expansive mess hall and did their dramatic best to seem pissed off and otherwise not worthy of being approached. GI's cloistered in tightly knit ensembles of determined burden bearers quickly lost interest in them.

" 'Bout before, don't get me wrong, it's not that I want to butcher the pretty blue savages, but just thinkin' of one of them giant arrows splitting my head in twain is awful good reason to bitch aloud." Thoms said.

"I was just teasin' ya 'bout the minigun. They want to kill us all, I'll blow 'em up."

They sat across from each other at a deserted table.

"Wha', you don' want to blow up some Na'vi?" Milor asked in his guttural voice.

"Sure, now that they'd pincushion me on sight. But we're the twenty second century, privately owned version of colonial marines."

"Yeah, we trained three years to kill things, and me ano'er year ta blow stuff up."

Thoms shook his thick black half-inch long hair that would need trimming the moment human extinction on the planet wasn't threatened upon them.

"And I've put in three and three, basic-triage." He fixed his stout jaw'd massive friend with a firm pewter gaze. "That's what I'm talking about. We're the cream man, we're better than this."

Milor nodded, jutting his jaw out even further. "You got a point."

"Daisy-cutting some damn tree the locals think is a god, about to rain futuristic brimstone on their sorry arses. It's what you do to a rabid animal, not neolithic tribals. Hey, you believe this nonsense about Jake Sully leading the savages?"

"Haven't gi'en it much thought."

"I don't think so." Thoms gazed speculatively into the back wall. "First recon goin' over to the enemy, even for some extra fine tail? No way, Quaritch has it wrong."

Milor was also shaking his head in small arcs.

"My friend, it was that Spellman character, he's the mastermind behind all this." Thoms said confidently.

"You sure? Spellman seemed real daft when I was helpin' 'im make like a real man wi' that Trudy lass."

"True that, he is daft, most of 'em science geeks are. I'd know, I had to mentor under enough of 'em in triage. But let me ask you this; would someone who isn't daft, say anyone of us GI's other than Wainfleet, try playing cowboys and indians as the damn indians?" Thoms slammed his forefinger into the wooden surface of the table, emphasising his point.

"No, 'spose not.. But Spellman?"

"Yes, Norm Spellman. After you hooked him up, did he ever put in for his side of the bargain?"

"No, my boots 'aven't been polished worth shit."

"He had lots of time. What was he doing with all that time, besides humping fair Trudy for thirty seconds a go?"

Andy Milor lolled his head, keeping his look ever cast on the more gangly man's forehead. After nodding he began setting about the task of cracking all of his knuckles in turn.

"Yeah, you see.. You see my friend, you see. He's behind all this, mark my words." Thoms said.

Milor's dry lips parted, he was about to say something when Thoms raised the flat of his hand to indicate silence.

"Shite. Bloody Brigg's just entered." The corporal apothecary said. There was a large ruckus spreading by the entrance to the mess hall. "And look at the size of that welt on his cheek!"

"Hope he 'aint same unit as us tomorrow."

'Oi! There you limey blokes are.' The ruckus grew in temper as it drew closer.

"I'd rather he be guarding my back than one of the loony miners."


	2. Chapter 2

(Terran doomsday on Pandora) T + 13 Minutes

Blackened flesh-leafed smoke spread from a charnel line disappearing into the slaughtered jungle. Howls of fleeing and dying were quickly whittling from a chorus to individual meaty choking noises and incurable screams. Snarls and animalistic trumpeting from the victors leapt and carried with the crashing of bush as they manically searched for survivors. The only steady gunfire of the defeated forces to be heard was from above and very distant, adjoined with titanic explosions of plummeting craft.

"Simmons!" Thoms screamed, dashing his head about, with his hand on the button of his useless mic out of blind habit. "Seriously! Forty five fucking seconds I'm gone and now you've ghosted? Damn it!.."

The corporal apothecary, half zombie, half soldier automaton and half man recognising his last day, fell to his knees, running gentle fingers to the eyelid of his friend.

"Adiaphorous.. You're going to be fine Andy, don't pansy out on me." In a lurch that caused his abdominal wound to spurt, Liam turned about to slip a needle into the other patient's shoulder, and spun back. Without his combat jacket on, sweat from the merciless heat clung cutting knee height grass to his exposed skin, criss-crossing narrow itchy cuts there. Shade from a tree smashed over by a Titanothere gave all three partial respite, and cover from one direction at least.

"Simmons I need your O-negative for transfusion! Fucking hell!"

"I-" Milor hacked on his own blood "I want you to tell me ma some'in-"

"How the hell am I going to tell your mother something? Stop pretending like your going to die."

"I been shot, me heart's goin' ta stop-"

"You were hit by a human round."

"Wha?"

"Yes." Thoms kept peering around, keenly attempting to see anything big before it saw him. He violently cringed as wildly flying shrapnel splattered jungle all around, including their fallen tree. "A dumb ass miner wet his pants and started emptying his Carb when he was crushed. You're just suffering internal bleeding."

"Oh good-"

A ruthlessly muscled black canine creature, six limbed and bearing exposed teeth dripping in human vitae, leaped onto into view, slumping instantly dead when bullets from Thoms hip fired gun imploded its head.

An inhuman feminine voice keened next to them.

"Eh', there's one of 'em savages." Milor slurred.

Thoms looked at the Na'vi laid out prostrate next to his fellow Terran, her head wrapped tenderly in his jacket stained the deep red of her life fluid.

"I know."

... ...

(Terran doomsday on Pandora) T - 2 Hours, 31 minutes

A repetitive voice, anxiously growing out of a whisper, sounded again. "Ahoy Thoms.."

From the sleeping sweet hallucinogenic grip where he walked Pandoran rainforest canopy without mask and without gun, Liam cruelly awoke. "Wha?.. Shite dude, I was having a good dream about your mom." He quietly said at the dark figure in the top bunk next to him.

"Yeah, yeah. What's this we only sending just one shuttle at the tree?" Xambele asked.

"Why ask me?"

"You're the nerd, don't you know this kind a crap?" The few others awake within earshot murmured in mirth at this.

"Money, why else."

"Bull-shit."

Thoms ran a numb hand over his face, de-sleeping eyes and harshly waking himself with the stench of rubbing alcohol his hands always had. "..Are you accusing Quaritch of being stupid?" "No." Xambele made a face of revulsion. "No. You're the one always talking smack about 'the machine' an' all that."

"Are you saying that Quaritch is so dumb as to spend fifteen million dollars in Fusion Lode to fly out a shuttle that'll be as useful as a dick on you?"

Eavesdropping chuckling murmurs multiplied, accompanied by a brittle settling of calm by the momentary release of pent up apprehensive force.

"Screw you."

"Quaritch, Selfridge, Command; none of them would spend that kind of money for what?.. More firepower? A slightly higher potential for you or me to make it back? Redundancy against the backwater-"

"Maybe he don't want to risk both shuttles. Ya' think of that?"

"Weren't we told expected casualty rates were to be negligible? The Na'vi don't even possess the means to scratch the glass-"

"Whatever." Xambele said, waving the gangly corporal apothecary away dismissively.

"I know what you're thinking.." Thoms pulled a tooth sized louse from his thigh.

"Yeah, what's that?"

"Fifteen million dollars, why; not even a single kilogram of unobtanium would pay for that. What is the price of a human life-"

"Ya! You made your point." Xambele spat, dropping to the darker shadows of the floor and out of sight.

By the grimmer slants of stares all around, all focused, and the weighting of breaths; none of the eavesdroppers missed it either.

Below a juggernauts snoring slowed, then stopped.

"Damn it, I was hopin' thi' was a nightmare I could simply forget." A gravely low voice said bereft of any of the harsh resolution nibbling at all areas of quiet discussion about.

"You sleep?"

"Yeah, I took a pill." Milor responded.

"Pill, what pill?"

"Dunno - It was pink and had a squiggly mark on one side. It worked."

In the creaking bunks filling the cozy room, gently illuminated by a steel barred square window, the residents of Hells Gate awoke out of their fitful or non existent slumber.

Milor sat up out of his cramped bed, banging the bald spot on his square head off Thom's bunk, the wooden area bleached from a hundred such previous actions.

"Think this 'll be last mor'in we wake up, all of us that is?" The big man asked.

At that moment two camo fatigued miners, lapdogs of Wainfleet, entered with chests inflated by misperceived command.

"Pray tell, I hope it is the last morning for those two to waste our air."

"Hunh."

'Ok marines, rise and shine, it's butt kicking time-'

'Yeah you jarheads. The blue apes will shiver when we deliver-'

"Shut up!" Milor blared, seconded by a half dozen others and derisive guffaws by everyone else.

'Uh- Quaritch says everyone in the mess in five.'

"Can we masturbate first?" A young man in the bunk beyond Thom's jested.

'Uh-'

'C'mon you slack jawed airsuckers. Le-eeet's a go!' Wainfleet blubbered from outside the odoriferous rectangular room.

A score of grunts sounded off alongside the cracks of knees and thud's of leathery heals landing on concrete.

"I got dibbs on your bunk Chullock when you don't come back." A GI amongst the unsurely moving mass joked.

"Sod that. Only reason I'd eat it 'cause you were busy flirting with one of the female blue skins."

"More like one of the male ones." A heavyset man, one of the few faces that was neither scared nor revved, said after cocking his leg and blasting the two miners with methane.

"I wonder what voodoo crap the civ's are pumpin' 'em selves up with so they can brave gettin' outta bed?"

"Shoowee, Cosgrin you stink man! Fear of the savages' cookin' you alive put that smell in you?"

"The savages don't actually cook us alive. They spit you and toss you on the roaring flame."

The carpet of idle comments did little to hide what lay beneath, the fearful floorboards of which unthinkable unknown would cause their deaths.

Thoms glanced about, eyes pinging off the slight bulges in the pockets or clenched fists of every GI who looked like they were about to piss their pants.

"I see Quaritch decided to allow us to administer that onslaught drug to ourselves." He said.

"You gotta' problem wit' that?" A mostly dressed Jubal challenged.

"What are you gunna do, beat up your medic? Dumb ass."

There was a small silence in the cloister around them littered with faces, of which some were flushed, others afoul with shivers, most still didn't really have any idea either way other than they will fight this day and possibly die, something they have told themselves they were bred and born to do; good enough to cross the stars to do it.

"You aint flyin'?"

"I wouldn't be your medic then, would I? Dumb ass." Thoms finished his dressing curtly before the notoriously aggressive man's scowl. Growing unease fraught laughter and monosyllable whooping angst drowned out any further confrontation.

"For once you made a dumber decision than me, runnin' on the ground will see the highest deathtoll." Milor nodded.

"There won't be a death toll." Someone said, ignored.

"Ours is to do or die." Thoms recited, returning to his bunk.

"You're runnin' wit' the footsloggers Thoms? Never t'ought you'd 'ave the gutz for that... Aw Milor, did I make fun of your little boyfriend?" Some brawny crewcut dragged, eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep and reading by penlight.

Thoms dropped in front of his rhino compatriot. "I'll remember that when it comes time to patch you up."

"I was posted flyin' biotch-"

'You damn assholes, I will bring the pain, le-eeets a go!" Wainfleet's slovenly drawl blasted, the slam of his heel on the ailing swinging door accentuated the words and his immanent arrival.

In walked a bare chested Sergeant Wainfleet, smoking a fat contraband cigar that at least smelt better than the cramped dorm, wide stance'd like he just layed one of the girls displayed in one of the many posters in his room. From shoulder to shoulder to his pant line was a fresh tattoo of the Grim Reaper, scythe and all. Across his collarbone line was an inked banner in gothic writing reading: Angle of Death. Everyone in the room who could draw line of sight to the man snickered.

"Why the hell does everyone laugh?.. You punks scared witless?"

"Nice tattoo sarge, very acute. You riding shirtless?"

"Why thank you Thoms, I got it this morning in honour of the death toll I'm about to bring upon the Na'vi. Quartich won't let me go shirtless though."

Every fully dressed marine stood rigidly at attention by their bunks, lips fighting further snickers.

"Now! I understand that almost everyone of you is going to be a real man by bringing the pain on the ground. Sigg's and Cheops, you ridin' with me AMP. Everyone else get to the armour vault for your footsloggin' gear!"

"Sir, I hear we can't pick the blueskins up more than a click away.. In the mountains. That true?" The bravest of the frightened mortals asked.

"We have high technology, they have low IQ's. You scared son?"

"No!" The GI snapped.

"Good. Get some!" Wainfleet yelled, running out of the room.

"Get some!"

"Get some!" The two miners tore after him.

"We're all going to die." Thoms joked to Molor. Other than the big man, no one laughed. The room had the pall of a haunted cemetery at the deathly hour.

"Cheops', you ridin' AMP? How much cock you stroke to get that?" An intimidating grunt questioned.

The nervous spectacle toting man stared dumbfounded back.

"If Wainfleet's such a real man, he should run with us outside a walkin' tank." Someone else said.

"Won' matter, blueskin's arrows punch through cockpit glass like..."

Curses and spiteful blathering surmounted all the residual noise of those not fully dressed and ready.

Thoms shook his head and pivoted to his large friend. "Look at these fools.. You remember Quaritch's slapstick speech yesterday? Who else besides the two of us weren't sitting there nodding like puppies after Pavlov's bell?"

"I slept through the speech. Quaritch likes to talk, so I didn't expect anything important."

"Nothing important was said. 'Cept that our lives are on the line."

"Have been since we got 'ere." Milor responded, thumbing over an elongated sickle shaped scar under the fabric of his sleeve.

A spine wrenching crack of fist on face assaulted the duo, followed closely by the sight of a man with smashed spectacles and his assailant being beaten on.

"What the fu- the enemy is out there!" The smaller man with a newly broken nose protested.

Milor pushed past the doc, barging into any chance of the fight ensuing further.

'Are you shaved-tail cowbells still in there?' Wainfleet's voice came in at a yell.

"Seems holdin' someone's back for half a decade don' stand fer shit-"

"Save it 'till we are done wit' the Na'vi!"

The strain clotting the room could be cut with a spoon.

"Everyone got their wills squared away?" Thoms asked. Even smashed-faced spectacle toter looked at him gravely upon this.

'Le-eeet's a go airsuckers! Don't make me get my towel!'

Ignoring their idiotic sergeant, the corporal apothecary nodded with as much patrician understanding as he could muster.

"..Ok nitwits, I know this religious mantra from back on my lunar colony. Anyone who wants it, gather round and drop to one knee. I'll prepare our spirits for the afterlife, in the unlikely event that we need it." He spoke.

Belonging to some indescribable sect, the devout Milor turned, dropped his head and fell to his knee. Thoms drew out a smooth black oblong pearl the size of his thumb that glittered with inner radiance. He didn't let surprise show much when all thirty six recruits made a lacklustre terribly broken semi circle amongst the dishevelled bunks and fell with tarnished pride as Milor did.


	3. Chapter 3

(Terran doomsday on Pandora) T + 16 minutes

The pitiful remnant of the spitting gunfire died to the sounds of engorging large carnivores and far off stampeding behemoths. The last battle fought by humanity with explosive munitions left its cratered and defoliating mark like a random hungry plague. Leaves, to branches to the creatures caught within, roiled in small infernos. Trunks of giant trees were pock marked, some threatening to topple in the gathering breeze and a strange and virgin relative quiet set in. No fauna strayed to birth their music into the silence.

"Quit whining ya' pansy." Thoms joked, his hands a flurry of far flung and manic activity, overburdened in the task of keeping two anatomies alive.

"But it.. hurts." A dilated eyed Milor complained. His face was pale and a cold sweat streaked from his flat forehead.

"No it doesn't, I've pumped you with enough authentic Earth morphine to let you fly home."

"That why.. everyt'ing feels.. good?"

"You bet."

Thoms leaned back to the cyan alien, ignoring the spark of pain his sick purple bruised ribcage demanded he attend. He jabbed a syringe into the clear dermal absorption bio pack atop the stabilising Na'vi's jugular.

"Are all Na'vi this beautiful?" He asked.

"Only the females." Milor coughed.

Erupting from the wasp revolver held irresolutely horizontal above his chest, the big man unloaded an unnecessary number of shells into yet another ravenous viperwolf arrival.

"Conserve ammo." Thoms said after batting the weapon upwards.

"Why.. I'm dead real..soon. You won't need too.. much to get back to Hell's Gate- don' gi' me that look.. I know.. I'm dying. Black blood... is from the liver."

"No shit."

"Thoms?" Milor hushed.

"Damn it man, anything you request of me is pointless. I can't make it back to Hell's Gate. I don't even know where it is from here."

"... Who's goin'.. to cross your arms.. for departure? The final.. one.. I.. mean."

Thoms allowed a small laugh, turning it helpless and unending when he had to empty his own confiscated wasp revolver into another vengeful viperwolf.

"Dunno, but if I go out in some heroic fashion, I'll be accepted... I pray.. Damn it, I didn't start praying till I got here. Woodsprites that move against the wind, trees all connected to each other like weeds; this Eywa really exists you know... Milor?.."

There was further heavy silence, adjoined by a tear that wouldn't come.

"Milor?..."

"Milor.." He whispered, head juddering a quenching instant. "Rest as a warrior."

Corporal Apothecary Liam Thoms crossed the giant man's arms and lifted his mask to close his eyes, his closest and only friend on three planetoids.

"I'll be fighting on the Fields next to you soon. You'll have all eternity to hear my bitching-"

There was a soft feminine moan to his side, one of pain and disorientation.

"Sorry miss." The doctor hectically spoke in fluent Na'vi. "Keep still, your.. healing remedy needs to stay below your heart-"

The girl's golden eyes, twin suns of a potency he'd never crossed breathing or dreaming, beheld him and forced him to lower his gaze.

"Demon." She didn't even breath, meekly attempting to move.

"No, stay still! You move, the healing remedy kills you." He warned, true fear for something that had transformed from alien enemy into a someone's wellbeing.

She slowly raised a weak blood stained arm. "Demon." Her four fingered hand grasped his camo shirt with surprising strength.

"I am trying to save you! Please!" He begged. He ran a tender leather gauntleted hand down the sleek tough inner elbow curvature of her massive arm. "You need to stay still or" he pointed at the bag affixed to her neck. "your healing remedy kills you."

"Save me?" She asked to the sky above. With an effortless flinch of feline sinew she flung the smaller man hard from her, his face clenching in agony as his body cracked multiple times when it slammed against the fallen tree shadowing them. By the time his paralyzed legs flopped over Milor's peaceful corpse, the Na'vi warrior was upright, bow in hand and two meter shaft aimed at him.

"Or not." He joked, winded, surprised.

... ...

(Terran Doomsday on Pandora) T - 7 minutes

Corporal Apothecary Thoms sustained his steady breathing, marshalling his small troupe ever onwards towards the shifting shadows that housed the hidden enemy. Despite his deteriorating situation, nothing about the camouflage neoproprylene wearing GI's outward appearance, save that he blinked twice as often, indicated he was presently unable to go into hunter-killer mode. The only being in the universe to notice it, a similarly composed juggernaut, remained silent; listening instead to the final throws of slovenly drivel flaring out of everyone's com.

'... we are at war. In war the enemy does not deserve our hesitation in killing stroke. This is not a war we execute with prejudice or joy, but neither is it one we started; only an engagement we can finish for the betterment- Wha- Crap! Stupid side vent- Damn it!- just sucked out my speech-..' There was a long huffing pause riddled with curses. 'Whatever.. Like my great grand pappy use to yell, um.. You mess with the best, you.. um.. Lock and load all you footslogging ladies, yeeah-heh get some!'

A forced cheer of blatant platitudes dimmed by intervening plastic masks echoed and disappeared throughout the treacherous terrain. Soon following it over the com was flickering chorus of static ridden reports from the ragamuffin militia, which suddenly went dead for the motley group of Snake Team.

"Shit, what was that-" A scared voice blared.

"Keep your pants dry! I cut you off. I am still in contact with command. I do not want you worrying about things you cannot effect. Instead you morons will concentrate on not shooting Milor and I." Thoms spoke in simple strained sentences with barking derision at the non-soldiers of his squad, which was everyone but the giant and himself. "Heyzeus.. You pansy pick wielders aren't so 'yeah lets shoot us some savages' now, are you?.. Suddenly, when thrown on your doorstep, war fucking sucks!.."

The civilians, white knuckled around their mishandled guns, gawked both at him and surrounding environment, awaiting to strike the phantoms they whispered about in the Samson. Heavily dilated eyes, mouths resting slightly open, and sweat that already painted thick dark lines down their sides conjoined with foul indication to their sluggish movements.

"These guys smell weird. Sweat has sweet a odour." Milor spoke as he observed a wicked looking multi-segmented insect fleeing not far from his boots. Its mandibles were each half the length of his thumb.

"Live and let live Andy, even when they're ugly as a miner's squeeze." Thoms said, sniffing. Having taken point, he turned to face his unsettled coterie. "Told ya' Quaritch would coke these boys.. Hey miner Flavius, you got the brains to guess why they drugged you up?"

"Sir, 'cause the narc' they juiced us with means we uh.. 'shall not flag or fail, we shall never surrender'... ?"

Thoms looked at Milor with abject surprise, and Milor back.

"That was an awfully kind way of phrasing your coward-"

"Yeah" another jittery miner piped up. "'Drain the pain, tame the aim' sir."

Thoms fixed the green eyed ungainly monocle toting man with disapproval. "Never interrupt me. Or Milor-"

"Sir, yer' a doc, will we become addicted-" The youngest of the group by a clear margin, an innocent nubile man perhaps not even twenty years old, half squeaked.

"Look around you Miner.. Simmons! All of you, take a look!" Thoms roared, marching to in front of the slowly advancing adolescent man. "Here, exposed on the flank, we are at the bottom of every chain of survival and our survival doesn't mean a louse's dietary needs to the people that put us flesh bags on the flank! We are the squishy snacks, our guns won't do squat against half the fauna that might happen upon us out here. You want to live? You treat me and Milor like divine avatars of whatever god or gods it is you pester... You will end every sentence with 'sir'! When either of us talk, you do not!" Thoms rubbed his temple, the throb there a telltale sign the cortosol released from stress was activating the latent chemicals of Onslaught. Milor too appeared particularly focused, clench jawed and mean. Conversely the berating was taking what little backbone the cannon fodder had and bending it upon itself.

"Fatso.. Miner Hoodu" Thoms nodded to the man with curly black hair poking out under his helmet. "What type of drug they coke you up on?"

"Tri..nitro..toluene Two? Sir."

"Tha's TNT, you mean Trinitroglycerine?" Milor asked.

The man's eyes bulged further. "Yes.. Sir."

"T2's, sheesh." Milor muttered as he scanned the interweave of grossly massive overhead branches meters above. "Thoms look a' that. Seems like a hangin' sack o' gas."

"No wonder you boys got the shakes.." Thoms said, peering at the peculiar piece of flora. When he looked back at his men, he grimaced. "It's no reason to get scared. Withdrawal of the juice flowing through Milor and I is much worse."

"Ohh yeah." Milor jawed. "Like bein' too near a bomb blast."

But the shaken pall didn't adjust; behind exo-masks mouth breathing civilians continued to stare at him like a stingbat into floodlights.

The gangly private Thoms, looking at the misfit tools he was given, that his life likely depended on, asked as reassuringly as he was able. "So.. non-soldiers of Snake Team, why are we on the flank? Besides that you are expendable and Milor and I are hierarchal shit disturbers."

There was no response, only wide eyes of sheltering children.

'Snake Leader this is Raging Phoenix' Came over the corporal's com, as if the inimitable drawl of Sergeant Waynefleet needed introduction. 'Overhead reports globe like heat signatures in your area, advise-'

"Private Milor, will you illuminate them." Thoms said.

'Raging Phoenix this is Snake Leader, the signatures are just obesus rotundus.'

Milor joined Thoms out in front. "Right.. On Earth, you hit the flank to wrap around a line, catch the enemy in a vice like grip, see." The big boulder of a man demonstrated with his hands.

'Snowball trees Snake Leader?'.. 'Take them out.'

"But the Na'vi won' be doing that 'cause they haven't any experience doin' that because they never fight big battles."

'Negative Raging Phoenix, obesus rotundus- puffball trees, have a half tonne explosive yield. Will suffer heavy casualties.' Thoms put his hand to his head once more, massaging away a trauma induced twinge as he simultaneously spoke and analysed one ball of vine trellised gas.

"But-"

"I'm speakin', means you are not! The Na'vi will charge right at us, Light Brigade like."

'Roger that Snake Leader.'.. 'Do not fire.'

"Sir, Milor sir?" One miner, holding his Carb like a life preserver, asked.

"Yes sir." Thoms spoke flatly into his mic. Something in him visibly snapped. He tore off his exo-mask and opened his mouth to the canopy. "Ahhhhhhhhh! Ahhhhhh, damn it! How stupid can he get! Are we so fucked?" He maintained yelling until eventually having to replace his mask after the first sucking of xenon choked air, and pressing red enflamed palms to his just behind his ears, rearing on his fear besotted squad. "Ok, Snake Team.. I want all pairs clustered to my left, between the rest of the battalion and the two of us."

"But sir, we're to form a serrated line; watch each others back and-"

"The day I rely on your eyes to watch my back, it's 'cause I'm a faster runner than any of you slack jawed, grunge-toking maggots, and we are in retreat!"

"Uh-" One of the miner's whimpered.

"Get your sorry asses huddled over there and leave the cutting edge of the flank to Milor and I!"

Scared stares of begrudgingly accepting bloodless faces began shuffling in the general direction of together. Thoms shook his head, making a circular sign to his deity with closed eyes.

"...What has got you lot so goosed?" He asked sharply to their sustained spinelessness. "The Na'vi do not have access to explosives, so proximity does not mean a damn thing. Ok princesses?"

They wouldn't meet his stare, instead half heartedly tramping forward without a word.

"Milor; safe, my age, your favourite number, check."

The juggernaut yanked the small profoundly scraped box unit on his belt up to his mask, playing the dial until frequency 22.7 came up, pressing the scan button once finished.

"I'm in Thoms."

"Damn it these guys are useless. Pray the Na'vi hit us Rambo-like in the centre; it's only you and me out here..."

"You think the Na'vi will lay in ambush?"

".. From what I read in Augustine's books, the natives aren't inherently war like. Hopefully lack of experience- no experience against a force like this, and a limp dick lab coat as a leader, will leave them with misguided hubris."

"Yeah." Opposite the demeanour of the lumbering boulder of a man, Milor's voice wasn't solid and unshakable.

"Huh, we're getting soft too. Five years of guard detail and we allow fear to poison us before attack."

"I suppose.. Just tha' we're so close to rotation, and if there was one thing stoppin' us from seein' home again, its a bunch of trigger happy jitterbugs holding the line wit'."

"We'll be fine." Thoms didn't even reassure himself the words were so paltry. "Two thousand Na'vi warriors and growing.. This won't be like Hometree; hey remember-"

'This is papa dragon, I want everything high and tight. I want to be home for dinner...' The colonel's voice broke over all com traffic. It caused most to crane their necks and look vainly up. The drone of the flotilla of airships, from the low hum of the shuttle's fusion engines to the multitudous whine of dozens of attack craft, could be heard through the canopy, but not seen. The chorus of Earth's flying assault force whispered and howled with an odd haunting resonation through the floating mountains and rising mist, adding further fright to the ant like footsloggers amongst giant Pandoran rainforest. '... mark my words they're out there.' The colonel finished.

The whole line of Terran's had stopped as open static continued for a brief moment and then the colonel addressed his troops once more. 'I expect the best from each and every one of you, so here is a little treat.' Barely discernable, Quaritch spoke to someone else near his person 'Romeo Foxtrot, put on psi war ops. Make it loud.' and was responded to 'This is Romeo Foxtrot.. shall we dance?'

Ears perked and minds eager for escape attuned. There was a heavenly noise.

"Holy mother of all.." Thoms exclaimed, a lifting of his tired brows finding him.

In ear pieces all throughout the Hallelujah Mountains pupils dilated, hairs bristled, cheeks pulled back and hearts thumped ever faster as brains were bombarded by their own chemicals as well as artificial ones in situ. Heavy violins struck a bombastic chord, followed by a higher one and seconds later were joined by the keen, heavy beats of trumpet. The ubiquitous musical launch emblazoned retina with self conjured smoky images of dominance and invincibility.

"If you're going to activate the synth-adrenalin, this is the piece to do it with!" Thoms had to yell.

Horn and string conjoined and a full flotilla of dynamic, power infused, living music stamped upon the doubts of all the people, even those who had no idea what was playing. Fear had evaporated from the civilians of Snake Team. Guns at the level, might was right; high handed purpose defined its own righteousness.

A thought blotting radicalism underwent apotheosis via a primal, visceral rage needing no stimuli nor fuel to set off. Behind each coiled trigger finger the mighty gunner was a consequence-less bereavement of actions once coined violent, now marking an indescribable heroin of foreseen remorseless triumph. Good became something clear and gauntleted, enemies devolved to faceless monsters that would meet the a hail bullets and doom.

"You hear that Milor? Waynefleet redefines the word stupid! 'Die Walker Riding the Valerie'-"

By the time symbols clashed, the recording picked up in decibel and a soprano female added her opera sway to the masterpiece, as far as either Milor or Thoms could see soldiers and wannabe's alike shouted with eager, reckless abandon.

"Thank every deity in the multiverse, this might of saved us." Thoms said to himself, semi- exultant of what he saw as well as due to his own combat drugs kicking into effect.

The music hit climax as if a heart in itself and boundless courage ran in rivers.

"Whooo-ah!" Milor roared, pounding his helmet.

"Oo-rah!" Thoms growled back, his head roiling in delight and the blasting crescendo. "We might just make it out of this mess!"

As the blissful composition over the com died, it was picked up off tune by the harsh throats of drugged, heavily armed civilians.

'Snake Team, picking up a heat signature in the overhang to your right. Can't tell the size, Vortex is eating the scan.' The tinny voice of command chimed over the com.

Thoms, Milor and a half dozen other humans scanned the thick branch five fathoms above them.

Something vaguely cute scanned back.

'It looks like some sort of scaled six legged sloth. Nothing I've seen before. It's just watching us Raging Phoenix, no threat-' Thoms reported.

'Roger that Corporal, take it out.'

Before Thoms had time to wince the unmoving animal and the branch it was on disappeared, exploding into a whimsical display of screech, blood, bark and smoke.

'Target down. Get some!' An excited voice hyped.

"Shite, I thought I cut you idiots off- cease fire!" Thoms roared.

They stuttered their hail of lead, and restarted it; following the too-slow escape of the dead creature's offspring.

"Cease fire!"

They continued firing, cursing and challenging with equal lack of inhibition.

Suddenly awoken to the cold jarring water of nightmare, Andy Milor and Liam Thoms glanced long at one another, with shakes of Onslaught and remorse for the Frankenstein they had cheered into existence.

'Hold it..' Raging Phoenix said. 'Got heavy movement about five hundred meters out.'

... ...


	4. Chapter 4

(Terran doomsday on pandora) T+23 Minutes

There is a dream out here. A REM flight of freedom from the 1 to 99% tyranny, the dauntless conscious ignorance machine, the utter despoliation of mother Earth. A hope, the spark from two colliding rocks arcing towards amassed tinders of two races' resolution and the hearth log of the infinite power of human imagination. A lee in the harsh hurricane of technologically outstripping evolution by a million years and falling from the circle of life. A release, the placation of burden by a hundred generations hadn't fallen on sentient shoulders here, a weight so vast that a planet dies because of it. There is a dream called Pandora, a beauty that will steal your breath and your heart by merely looking upon her from the void ten thousand kilometres distant.

To Thoms, these lucid apparitions of his failing mind graced him with lingering smile; he'd die part of this dream.

"Clothes cannot save lives." Li'sal spat as she paced.

"Gauze laden with.. healing balm, held in place by clothes can. To stop you from bleeding to death."

The tall Na'vi female touched the long flat bald wound atop her head, fingers that trembled brushing an alien fibrous white cloth now held there by coagulated blood. As it was to the burning throb in her skull, the makeshift tourniquet and the gel like substance it held were cool to the touch. Her mask of fury softened, the bat like wings adorning her enemy grew feathers.

"You are going to die." She spoke, a calamity of mixed up unknown emotions and something else that lit a pilot light behind her eyes.

"About.." He grunted in pain, clutching his chest with. "..35 seconds left."

She knelt, cyan towering over fragile flesh, and brought the cream tip of her knife to his throat. Save for a near beam taking his mouth, he did not respond.

"You are unafraid." She observed quizzically. She didn't press the tip beyond a drop of blood sprouting out from his laryngeal prominence. His gaze into her wouldn't abate, not when she sniffed him and the disgruntled exhale of her breath fogged his mask.

"Twenty five seconds..." He reached up with his working arm, slipping a shaking thumb beneath his mask. Though she retreated a foot from the action, he maintained the smooth motion and dropped the instrument from his head.

"What are you-" Li'sesal began.

"Kiss me. It's my dying wish-"

She hit him with the palm of her hand, evicting the air from his lungs in a fitful gasp, that morphed into a fitful inhale from pain and Pandoran air. "You are insane! I will not touch a demon, except to kill it." She spat.

"I've never kissed beauty before." He wheezed, his head lolling and arms spasming. "Kissed my grad date, but that don't count, she felt sorry for me-"

"Do you not have ears demon? Just die."

"-No passion in that. Kiss me."

"No."

"I saved you. I-"

She grunted.

"-killed one.. of my own.. to keep.. you.. alive.." Words, like the power over his lungs, left swiftly the dying apothecary.

Li'sal fought an internal war abetted in chaos from head trauma and atomisation of her clansmen only minutes before.

"Fi..ve seconds.." Thom's eyes tried to roll, but willpower stronger than nervous reflux kept the gaze, pewter into gold, alive and on fire.

"Thank you." She mouthed. Her head dipped the final inches, eyelids submitting to gravity, and a single stout blue finger propped up the powerless haemorrhaging chin of the man who saved her life at the expense of his own.

She stopped a moist breath away, her surfacing distressed shakes matching his.

Something inside the GI palpitated for the last time, incinerating his every cell with pain and incurable resolution. A final act; he closed the space, lips touching hot lips and holding there as neither left the terminal velocity of embrace.


End file.
